


The Marmalade Cat

by marmota_b



Series: The Peridan Chronicles [6]
Category: Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis, Highlander: The Series
Genre: Age of Winter (Narnia), Backstory, Black market in Narnia in the Age of Winter, Calormen, Dimension Travel, Gen, Narnian Subcultures, Otherwordly visitors in Narnia, World War II, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-31
Updated: 2019-08-31
Packaged: 2020-10-04 07:56:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20467637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marmota_b/pseuds/marmota_b
Summary: This is the story behind the marmalade roll, and behind the setting-up of Narnia's black market and a smuggling ring in the border mountains with Archenland.It involved a Cat, of course.It also involved someone from Spare Oom.





	1. The Shocking Apparition of a Daughter of Eve

**Author's Note:**

  * For [songsmith](https://archiveofourown.org/users/songsmith/gifts).

> Lady Songsmith asked for a lot of things I felt inspired to write about all at once, and an early version of this story in my head did indeed contain all of them. As I finally got around to writing it, it became apparent it had to be cut down to size – even this size I ended up with ended up being almost too much.  
So it’s mostly a story of an accidental traveller between worlds. I hope I managed to hit on things you enjoy reading about in it.
> 
> I would like to claim my protagonist as an OC, but in full honesty, this turned into a _very_ subtle crossover in the telling, and so she is not so completely and certain elements of her character were lifted from someone else’s work. Her coming from a different fandom should not hamper your reading of this story as is in any way whatsoever; most of her background as elaborated on in the confines of this story in itself consists of my own embellishments. The only thing is, when I reveal it after the reveal (for I fear it might be rather telling before it), and if you’re familiar with her from the other fandom, you may connect a few other dots here and there. She walked in when I found myself dissatisfied with the OC I was trying to flesh out, and sparked far faster inspiration. There was no arguing with that, especially as I found myself pressed for time with a rather busy vacation going on; and this is a genre where I can happily admit to her origins in an existing work.
> 
> Many thanks to Liz who is the best beta-reading co-conspirator I could wish for!

**Chapter 1**

**The Shocking Apparition of a Daughter of Eve**

When Julia had slipped on the ice and the suitcase had come crashing down with her, echoing loud under the arch of the bridge, a short list of possibilities had run through her mind. What with her tumble happening right in front of a passing pair of gendarmes, most of them included the Czech gendarmerie catching onto her activities, and through them, the SS or the Gestapo, and ended in pain.

None of them included lying on her back in snow in a forest and staring, from a tickling distance, into the furry face of a rather large orange cat who _asked her what she was._

At first, she managed to respond only with a very confused, one may even say shocked, “Huh?” Then, as things connected in her brain (though they certainly still did not make any sense), she quickly scrambled back to put a less startling distance between herself and the – the _talking cat._ She cast her eyes and hands around for the suitcase and her precious cargo; it was still there, and seemed, so far, miraculously mostly unharmed.

“You smell very different,” the cat announced. It was standing rather gingerly in the snow, like all cats of her acquaintance always had, with its ears and tail alert.

Julia decided she must have hit her head when she had fallen and this was some sort of residual hallucination.

“Different from _what_?” she said, incredulously, because apparently talking to her talking cat hallucinations was preferable to just staring.

The cat seemed to consider the question seriously.

“Winter,” it said in the end.

It made no sense. Hallucinations probably never did.

“_What_ are you?” the cat repeated its first question.

“A... nurse?” Julia offered, uncertainly.

That probably did not help anything.

“You are a Daughter of Eve,” the cat announced, almost accusingly.

“... What?”

* * *

The cat took her, with urgency, into an underground complex of dug out corridors and... Hide-outs? Dwellings? Whatever it was, it – she – called it The Dens.

Anyone who knows cats knows they can be very urgent when they put their minds to it. Julia could not resist following it, even though she still thought she had to be hallucinating.

The two centaurs in The Dens did not help dispel that impression.

The cat called them Prophet and Archer. Archer had a bow and a quiverful of arrows leaning against the earthen wall next to him. Prophet seemed old, grave and portentous, and not entirely there at all times. Their names sounded like codenames.

The Dens also sounded like a codename.

All that did not entirely help, either, but it meant she was capable of going along with it, business as usual.

* * *

Archer considered the Daughter of Eve with a sense of foreboding entirely unconnected to Prophet’s gift of foresight – at least he desperately hoped it was not his first ever manifestation of foresight but a perfectly understandable wariness common to anyone in their situation. Anything out of the ordinary could disrupt all of their carefully crafted plans for carrying on with their lives. Any disruption could have horrible consequences for someone.

Foreboding, but also a desperate hope, he had to admit to himself. Any rare sighting of humans inside Narnia was bound to bring thoughts of the old prophecy to the foreground. But there never was the right number; this one was alone.

She called herself Julia, but it was not her real name. The Cat caught onto it almost immediately, which was just the sort of insight you could expect from a Cat.

“That is not your Real Name, is it?” she said. “It’s only the name you wear right now.”

And the Daughter of Eve’s face crumpled above her bowl of warm porridge, and she said, nearly sobbing, “No. It’s Grace.”

The Cat, who currently went by Tipper, frowned at that ready admission, and soon after walked out, tail swishing, to watch the perimeter again.

“Cats have many names,” Archer explained to Grace afterwards, moved by her apparent utter confusion and shock, “and they will ignore any name at will if it does not suit them – and answer to anything if they decide they are being addressed.”

“Oh.”

“The thing about Cats you do not seem to understand is that only a Cat, the Cat’s parents and Aslan Himself know a Cat’s Real Name. They do not give them away freely. They consider the rest of us foolish for doing so.”

“I shouldn’t have,” Grace sighed, still just at the edge of sobbing. “It must be foolish of me to do so. But I just can’t – I can’t go on like this anymore, and you are...” She stopped herself before she could say something she thought she would regret, he concluded.

It did not quite add up. She was terribly agitated by something. Magic had been involved, that much was clear, and magic, these days...

“Friendly?” he offered.

She burst out crying.

* * *

“She cannot stay,” Prophet said. “If the Witch finds her, she will try to bend her to her will, or she will kill her.”

“She cannot go now,” the Cat said. “You know very well that with the preparations for the Harvest Festival, the Wolves are sniffing around. If we move through the Dens too close to the surface – and we would near the border – they would find us, and find the Dens.”

“But that could take days, and we do not have enough food for her,” Archer said.

And that much was probably true, Grace thought. She had been given an unappetising porridge for supper. Unappetising, but filling and warm, and she had been too tired, too hungry and too grateful for whatever respite she had just been granted by fate to do much more than wolf it down and then fall asleep almost immediately on the pile of moss and fur they had provided her with.

She had not been sure, when she woke up, whether she was not still dreaming. A strange dream in which the Reichsprotektor had turned into an evil Witch, the locals into talking animals and creatures out of legend, and her status as a medical professional from a different nation than the locals no longer protected her but on the contrary, turned her into a person in truth more hated and hunted than her contacts from the Resistance and black market networks. It cut far too close to home in many respects.

Food, though? Food she did have.

“The suitcase,” she said. “There’s food in the suitcase.”

She opened it for them to see, and they gasped in surprise at the bounty.

It should not have come as such a surprise for her that she gave most of it away for use by the suffering people of the country of Narnia. Who somehow still held a Harvest Festival every single year even though it had been Winter for nearly a hundred years and they had to celebrate underground with no harvest to speak of. But it was their country’s tradition, and they did not want it to be stamped out the way Christmas had been. (Why and _how_ Christmas had been outlawed, she had not yet dared to ask.)

That was the sort of indomitable spirit you wanted at your side when the country you found yourself in was ruled by a tyrant, that much was for sure.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I originally spelled Julia as "Iulia" in Archer's point of view, and my beta corrected it back to Julia, probably thinking it a typo. I have to agree it had to be confusing, so I kept it consistent throughout, but the spelling at that point was intentional because this Julia is the Central European Julia rather than the English Julia, and pronounced accordingly.  
:-)


	2. The Cat at the Festival

**Chapter 2**

**The Cat at the Festival**

If there was one thing the Harvest Festival taught her, it was that Narnia definitely wasn’t just a dream version of the same old.

The Dens were, of course, mostly cold – it would not do to keep them warmed up in too many places. It was not necessary most of the time, smoke coming out of the ground where no known dwelling lay would be suspicious, and keeping caverns underground warm at all times might melt the snow aboveground if the Resistance got careless, and that would be suspicious. (In her mind, she called them the Resistance, because what else should she call them?) Not to mention burning that much wood would be far too costly – and suspicious.

Grace missed the sun and the sky and fresher air terribly.

Still, hiding out in the Dens had definite advantages. For example, she learned that one section of the Dens was dedicated to – large-scale penicillin-growing: Archer, despite being the military one, was also a fairly accomplished healer, having inherited the underground _Penicillium_ plantation from a centaur who had been something of a scientist. Her own healer’s heart delighted in that, and she passed an enjoyable length of time inspecting the methods and equipment with Archer.

Another advantage was the fact that even though it was mostly cold when she was not in the kitchen, it was also mostly a constant temperature; she was out of the snow, out of the bitter wind, and that had to count for something.

It had to count for something for everyone who came to the Dens to celebrate. Talking Beasts of many descriptions. More centaurs. Satyrs. Fauns. (She was not entirely sure she understood which of them were which.) Dwarfs. Almost-human-looking beings that were apparently dryads, slipping down from – _out of_ – the tree roots in the Dens in ways that seemed to defy the laws of physics.

They were all staring at her, at first. Some of them were staring surreptitiously for most of the night.

She was a stranger in a fairytale land, intruding on and participating in something new to her. It was a country under a curse and this was their one night of respite. Despite their meagre means and the Witch’s limitations on any magic not her own, it was magical in itself: the magic of companionship, the magic of tradition held up under dire circumstances – like that one Christmas on the front in 1914 must have been magical. And despite that memory of an event from her own world, the Harvest Festival was entirely different from anything she knew, with dances she had never danced and songs she had never sung.

She was still in hiding, but she was hiding somewhere her old enemies could never find her. The new ones were, for this one night, nearly forgotten.

Tipper, of course, had found the warmest spot for the night, her eyes blazing in the half-darkness of the caverns as she handed out the prizes from Grace’s magical suitcase. (It was not magical! Was it?) Much like you could, apparently, trust a Cat to notice when someone was not using their Real Name, you could trust a Cat to know exactly what the cosiest position was.

Grace was neither too stupid nor too proud to sit right next to her and help hand out the food – after all, half of it was her own work, having, during the days of hiding and preparation, turned much of the groceries into full meals. The fruit preserves were probably the most sought after: jarred compotes and jams, worked into desserts to stretch further and to serve many portions. And the undisputed favourite turned out to be the marmalade roll: delicious, scrumptious, luxuriously sweet and sticky marmalade roll which, Archer had told her, was an old Narnian delicacy, remembered only in stories. She had not had actual orange marmalade, but apricot jam would do, and it was the perfect thing to do with the remaining eggs.

Many of the attendees asked her for the recipe.

In some ways, it _was_ the same old thing: desserts were always a treat, and old recipes brought forth old memories. But you could still see how different these people were, how each of the species had its own habits, quirks and idiosyncrasies. Her subconscious could not have made up all that, could not have made up the particularity of the marmalade roll and could not, above all else, have made up what she had learned of what _Aslan_ meant to these people over the past couple of days. Her subconscious could not be _that_ creative.

It also would not, she thought, be capable of coming up with someone like Tipper, so utterly self-serving as only a cat can be, yet so utterly selfless.

She found herself talking to the Cat, inquiring about her life and family; learning about the friends lost, the life turned upside down; and speaking of her own life’s upheavals in return. It was of course also very familiar, but Tipper’s stories were always marked by a sensibility foreign to humans. Cats do not form undue attachments to their mates and kittens; but they may form strong attachments to friends. And that was what hurt, and what Tipper was determined to protect.

“Centaurs, of course, place altogether too much importance on public names,” the Cat remarked. “It took very long to convince them it was important to take up different names for the Dens. You do need centaurs on your side because they are all unapologetically on Aslan’s side, as far as I know, and people trust them more than they trust Cats – as if Aslan were not a Cat, too, but you can’t expect most people to see it that way. Unfortunately, Archer is the only one of them in this neck of the woods who really has a sensible head on his shoulders. If it wasn’t for that, I’d certainly try and run the whole thing myself. And, Lion’s Mane, it would be so much work I am not sure I could do it.”

“I have noticed he is far more practical and has far more presence of mind than Prophet,” Grace noted. “I thought it was just because he’s younger.”

“Maybe in part,” Tipper conceded. “But mostly it’s just him. It’s a relief, because you can trust that he won’t turn out like Prophet when he gets older.”

By the end of the evening, Grace found out she was friends with a Cat. Moreover, they were now co-conspirators, plotting ways to get more food into Narnia, and to help the Narnians be that more self-reliant and that less reliant on the Witch.

The first pre-requisite of success was transporting Grace safely through the Dens over the border to Archenland. And the pre-requisite of that was getting word to someone named Alvar on the other side. Alvar, Grace learned, was already helping out the Narnians with food sometimes (as the Cat called it, “using the Narrow Path”) – but he was one young man against the Witch’s magic, the Witch’s servants, and the Witch’s official hold over Narnia, and there was only so much Alvar’s determination and the Dens’ network in conjunction could do against that.

Alvar had to make a regular, inconspicuous living in Archenland, too – being a full-time merchant helped cover his tracks, but it could not cover everything. The Witch could not come to suspect help was coming from Archenland, especially not when the old Archen king was turning a blind eye not just to the Witch’s rule over Narnia but at the same time also to the many Narnian émigrés in his own country. Upsetting that precarious balance in any way could be dangerous to many people (and they were all hoping Prince Lune would not do so when he became king – which was only a matter of time). And so, having someone besides Alvar on the other side, someone who already had experience with this kind of activity, could do wonders for Narnia’s Resistance.

Grace never asked why they remained in Narnia. She had asked that question the people in the other Resistance once. They had told her, “It is _our_ country, no matter who rules it, and one day it will be only ours once again.” Despite that, they had accepted “Julia the nurse”, German or not, and the way she had waltzed dangerously with official rules about ethnicity. She had been, to them, a tentative connection to those countrymen who _had_ left and were looking for ways to help from afar. By trafficking in supplies, Julia had found the one way she could help on an everyday basis on the spot.

Back there, the Czechs had told her they had already waited for nearly three hundred years for that self-determination they were once again hoping to regain. The Jews (hopelessly few of them) still living in hiding among them had had no country to call their own for nearly two thousand years. What was a hundred years of subjugation in comparison with that? Narnia could make it yet.

Although in here, it was an immortal Witch ruling over the country, which made the waiting rather a scary prospect. They would all have to hold tight onto their hopes. And maybe, just maybe, hope that Aslan would come help them, the way Tipper and Archer and Prophet still hoped.

She was not sure she held that hope herself, but she had to concede that a living god (_really?) _would undoubtedly beat the Witch and that, from the sound of their old stories, Aslan was certainly preferable.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If I didn’t confuse my historical facts, in the “Protektorat Böhmen und Mähren”, people of German descent had larger rations than people of Czech descent. (Not to mention the even worse situation of the Jews... *fade to black*) People who lived in the countryside or had contacts to people in the countryside were slightly better off, with access to agricultural produce – it was, of course, also rationed, but secret pig killings and stuff like that were easier to get away with, although also highly illegal and far more dangerous in their illegality than they would be in peacetime.
> 
> “The Narrow Path” is lifted from a British Museum YouTube video about smuggling in ancient Assyria (of all things!).
> 
> I asked uncle Google what a marmalade roll actually _was_, to see what it was relative to what Lewis would have had in mind rather than what I have in mind, and found out I was dissatisfied with the recipes it spat out. I can work my way around marmalade in Narnia; but baking powder or even _self-raising flour?!_ Surely there must be an earlier version of it without such modern conveniences. (Although it turns out baking powder as we know it today is an 1860s invention, so who knows, it might be possible for someone in Narnia to invent it – it just feels way too chemical and industrial for Narnia as we mostly know it. Liz suggests Dwarfs dealing with chemicals and wine-growing Fauns combining their knowledge could do.)  
Another problem I ran into was that the majority of old recipes for a marmalade roll I found were actually recipes for boiled pudding. And we know it’s not a boiled pudding.  
If you want a more “authentic” jam/marmalade roll recipe, [here’s](https://archive.org/details/b28085528/page/n363?q=%22marmalade+roll%22) one from 1864 that looks perfectly acceptable to me as Mrs Beaver’s actual marmalade roll recipe.  
Even though I’m still not entirely sure I understand what’s going on there. Is it choux pastry? It sounds like choux pastry.


	3. Merchants and Alleys

**Chapter 3**

**Merchants and Alleys**

Grace knew in her bones that she was sticking out like a sore thumb. In an ironic twist to her previous – and come to think of it, even current – activities, that seemed to be the story of her life these days.

Tashbaan had seemed like an exciting, beautiful, exotic place from afar. Up close, it mostly stank. The streets were crowded. The smells, perhaps not even too bad individually, were undeniably offensive in combination. After several months in the clear air of the border mountains between Archenland and Narnia, she felt on the brink of throwing up countless times a day.

What made it worse was the fact that people who looked like her and Alvar were a rarity here in Tashbaan, and often, she discovered to her shock and discomfort, slaves.

Once upon a time, Alvar had said, Calormenes had been eager to trade with the northern countries for all the things they could not get at home – fine furs, amber, intricate Dwarf work, salmon... Then the Witch disrupted the trade routes, and as they tried to find new ones, they ended up becoming an empire, and they started to look down on the northerners they once traded treasures with.

It made a lot of sense to Grace. Empires were often built in an effort to control trade.

It had taken some convincing for Alvar to let her accompany him on his journey to Tashbaan to begin with, but her argument of “You do want to help Narnia just like I do, and surely two people can find twice as many goods? This way you can concentrate on your usual fare and I can focus on what Narnia needs,” had finally done its trick. (“What Narnia needs” was, maybe, in strict honesty more truthfully expressed as “what Tipper thinks people will buy.” Which on this particular trip was in large part marmalade. Apricot jam could be arranged from Archenland, but oranges were a decidedly southern fruit.)

Alvar was still wary of her; but at the same time, she thought he did rather like her, and she did rather like him, and maybe, just maybe, if they learned to work together, they could learn to live together? She was not sure whether this was or was not the covert real reason behind her decision to go; but it certainly was an underlying one by now. She supposed it was a good sign of things finally settling down a little for her that she was even able to entertain the notion to begin with.

Alvar arguing for her to sleep in the courtyard of the inn they based themselves in was not entirely a good start of that working relationship, though. He claimed that they had to keep an eye on both the money purse and their pack animals and potential goods – preferably separately. And although she couldn't deny that caution was necessary, not to mention that Alvar knew much better than she did how to navigate the tricky waters of Calormene custom, it still rankled that he didn't fully trust her with the money just yet. Besides, wasn't it common courtesy to let women sleep indoors?

Dividing their efforts really did have its advantages, though. Or at first, it seemed so, when she successfully secured quite a reasonable price for dried fruits at a market. She was quiet, but calmly persistent, which turned out to be quite handy in haggling – her moments of quiet seemed only to serve to maintain an impression that she knew what she was doing, far more than she actually did with the unfamiliar currency. Some of the fruit she bought right away for her lunch, and she arranged for the seller to bring a goodly bulk amount from his stores to the inn in the evening.

She soon found out that purchasing the highly desirable marmalade was going to be another matter.

Marmalade was not to be found anywhere in the open-air market. Finally, a seller suggested to her that preserves like that were far likelier to be found in apothecary shops: an aspect of Calormene culture unsurprisingly hitherto unknown to her.

He told her she had to go further around the hill, into more upmarket alleys, where there were fewer travellers and where mostly local merchants and craftsmen lived – a firmly middle-class neighbourhood, she concluded to herself, and the look of the houses in that city quarter when she arrived confirmed that theory. These were mid-sized houses of people who could afford gardens, though not the mansions with fountains in their courtyards that lined the wide streets that upper-class, upper-hill Tashbaaners thrived in.

Alvar had warned her not to mention the goods were for Narnia. It would drive the price up, he had said. Grace soon learned that just looking like a Narnian was enough to drive the price up in these shops.

After three different ones, one of which did not have marmalade at all and two of which asked exorbitant prices, she found herself back in the alley she had walked through an hour before, looking at an orange cat she had seen someone chase away from a garden an hour before.

The cat seemed less surprised to see her than she was surprised to see it. Tashbaan was mostly a dog’s city, it seemed, even when it came to strays. Yet this tomcat – for it was a tomcat – seemed to possess the assurance of tomcats everywhere.

“You’re not Tipper,” she remarked to the cat.

The cat was, indeed, not Tipper: it was a tomcat, and despite being a tomcat, it was probably smaller than Tipper, because it was most probably a regular cat.

Still, being freshly friends with a Cat gave Grace a certain inclination towards finding a cat a welcome sight, and so she did not particularly mind when she found out, twenty minutes later, that the tomcat was still trailing her – by nearly falling over it when she stepped out of yet another rather unwelcoming shop.

“I should call you Tripper instead, you little nuisance,” she told him, reaching down to pat him – to no avail, as he immediately ran a couple meters away, in a perfectly cat-like fashion. “What do you think you’re doing? I don’t have any food to give you if that’s what you’re hoping for.”

It occurred to her that talking to an alley cat in the middle of an alley was not an activity bound to endear her to the merchants. At this point, though, she was beginning to sympathise far more with the cat than the merchants. The remainder of her day merely cemented the feeling.

Her mood was by no means helped by the fact that the shelves of pleasingly identical china and glass jars behind the counters in all the apothecaries were full of ingredients she just _knew_ she could find use for as a healer in Archenland, but they were ingredients that she simply could not afford to buy right now. Nor would the merchants allow her to inspect them or ask too many questions about them, the moment they realised she could not buy. After dawdling too long in the first two shops, she had to get a firm grip on herself and stop longing after the unreachable. It was not easy.

Evening found her preparing a makeshift bed in a niche in the inn courtyard, nearly exhausted from all the walking in the heat, and rather mad at Alvar both for the sleeping arrangements and for the way he scoffed at the only deal she had managed to make that day, suggesting better dried fruit at lower prices could be found in different parts of the city.

“And no marmalade?” he had asked, as if she had not been out all day searching for it.

What had she thought to get from this enterprise? Tashbaan was a horrible, horrible city, and Alvar and Tipper could both go hang.

The trouble was, she could not help helping people in whatever manner currently seemed best, and would not want herself to be any other way.

“I wonder if Tripper would know of any merchants who are not just out for profit,” she murmured to herself. “I bet he would. I bet he knows the merchants who would feed a cat, and that might be a good start here.”

Unless, of course, there were no such merchants to be found in Tashbaan.

And then something fuzzy brushed against her ankles and she looked down at a familiar golden-striped face.

“You again?” Grace said to the tomcat, not altogether displeased. “Do you also respond to whatever suits you?”

The cat nudged her with its nose and rubbed the side of its head against the side of her hand.

“I _would_ give you something to eat, but I don’t think you’d appreciate fruit, even if it’s dried,” Grace added, and started absentmindedly petting the solid, warm, furry head.

Before she knew it, she and the cat were both comfortably ensconced in the niche. You would perhaps think the cat’s warmth would be uncomfortable in Calormene heat; but as a matter of fact, the nights there can get very cold. The cat's warm, purring presence was quite pleasant and filled her with a feeling of _home_, sorely needed in this foreign land. It was a feeling connected to quilted bedspreads and homemade fruit preserves, somehow, and before she fell asleep, she thought with a corner of her mind that this was something sorely needed in Narnia as well.


	4. The Cat in the Black Market

**Chapter 4**

**The Cat in the Black Market**

Grace awoke from a dream in which someone was telling her, repeatedly, “Follow me”. The first thing she noticed was that the cat’s warmth was gone. When she opened her eyes, she saw the cat standing two or three steps away from her in the courtyard, looking back at her almost expectantly.

Her frame of mind had definitely been changed by her time in Narnia and the rest of this world. A couple of months ago, a Talking Cat had given her the shock of her life. Now? In a fairytale land, a cat expecting her to follow it was only one of many wonders. And following an animal was rarely a bad idea in fairytale stories; it had not been a bad thing for her when she had followed Tipper after her arrival. After all she had been through, since long before Narnia, exploring an exotic city in the middle of the night in the pawsteps of a cat had a certain whimsical appeal to it.

Despite having slept only a couple of hours after a long, exhausting day, she felt rested enough – or perhaps too restive to squash her re-awakened sense of adventure. It did occur to her that she should be afraid of what else might be lurking in the night, but she had lived her life in the constant presence of all sorts of fear for so long that it was second nature to her to bend this particular kind to her will and go on regardless.

And so, when the cat jumped up on a wall, she climbed on the wall as well, and followed the faintly light spot of the cat’s body and tail along the moonlit top of walls and over tiny yards filled with junk and shadows. The two of them wove their way around the hill that Tashbaan stood on, with the dark mass of the Tisroc’s palace and the glinting metallic roofs of the Temple complex always to her left hand. So they went, until they arrived at the opening of another larger courtyard, well-hidden among crowded houses, that was a surprising centre of no less surprising activity, lit by torchlight and oil lamps.

People were milling about and seated on blankets on the ground, there were hastily put up stalls, and there were wares everywhere – most of them not the colourful enticing stuff of what now occurred to Grace were essentially tourist markets, nor the sort of neatly stacked and untouchable displays she had seen in the shops, but eminently useful yet pleasant things. Some of the blankets were for sale; there were shawls, blouses, skirts, trousers, cloaks; there was fruit and vegetables; pottery and tiles; nice-smelling simple soaps and towels decorated with rows of embroidery; smaller items of furniture and neat locker boxes.

It was a market.

More specifically, it was a _black_ market.

Everyone present was clearly from Tashbaan’s lower classes, with the occasional exception of what looked to be people from the desert-dwelling tribes she had heard of on her way to the city. People were dressed simply. Some were clearly slaves. The majority of the people were either fairer- or darker-skinned than the Calormene standard, suggesting they came from the far reaches of the empire, or even from outside it. The things being sold here all belonged to the type of not exceptionally luxurious items that were still a luxury to someone who was not well off.

Grace was intimately familiar with the type.

And as the cat walked on into the crowd, still looking back at her, she followed it into the light with the sudden thought, “If this is a black market, maybe they have preserves, too!”

She wove her way among the stalls and displays, looking for any clues where such a thing might be found here. Every now and then, she noticed the cat doing much the same in some other part of the courtyard.

Well, that was pure nonsense. Whatever the cat sought, it was definitely not marmalade. But she could not help noticing that everyone present treated the cat with respect, in stark contrast to how the people out in the upper alleys in daylight had treated it.

Like to like. These folk were overlooked and despised, and out at night, just like the cat.

“Looking for something, little sister?” someone said from behind her. Grace nearly jumped out of her skin and whirled around to face a dark-skinned man with deep, merry eyes sparkling in the firelight like multifaceted gemstones. He was dressed in black, and seemed all arms and legs.

“Marmalade,” she said.

And then something, perhaps the atmosphere of the black market and the presence of so many Northerners in one place, possessed her to add exactly the thing she had previously learned not to say:

“We’re looking for some marmalade for Narnia.”

He grinned.

“I thought you might be. Well, if that’s the case, it’s Marah you want.”

And he pointed to one of the stalls at the end of the courtyard opposite to the entrance, where a middle-aged, rather plump, pleasant-looking woman with a coil of tiny braids on top of her head, was manning a stall full of jars and baskets.

* * *

Alvar woke to the sight of Grace plopping down two jars of marmalade before his eyes.

“This is what you get for making me sleep outside,” she said, smugly.

“What?”

“I found a black market run by the lower classes and slaves for their own use,” she informed him. “And a very acceptable and agreeable source of marmalade for Narnia.”

“How?”

“Well, strictly speaking, Tripper showed me.”

“Who?”

“The cat,” she explained, not explaining much.

“The _Cat?_ They have Talking Cats in Calormen?!” That incongruous piece of information was the last straw, and he finally rose.

“I don’t think he’s... I don’t know. The people there seem to think he’s... some sort of god?”

“What?” Alvar said, and vaguely, disconcertingly, realised he was back to his first question, not the wiser by much.

“Well, I suppose, he’s _their_ sort of deity. Not enthroned on high like the others here, you see; the lady at the stall told me she knew she could trust me because I came with the Cat. They worship the Spider and the Cat.” She indicated the seals on the two jars in front of him: one had a spider-web stamped into it, while the other featured a cat’s paw-print.

Alvar rubbed his eyes.

“I need tea,” he said. “How are you so awake?”

Grace shrugged. “Force of habit, I guess,” she said. “But, look, if we go there tonight, we can get two whole crates, for a much better price than anyone else was asking; and she said we could certainly come again next season, too.”

Over tea and breakfast, the pieces of what she had told him finally started falling into place.

“What do you mean, I made you sleep outside? Seriously, you don’t want to sleep inside. At my price range, it’s hard to find an inn in Tashbaan that’s flea-less.”

“Oh.” Something in her face softened. “Sorry I was... cross. Well. But I guess what I said is still true.”

“You think you followed a god? How can you be sure that’s a good thing, in Calormen?”

“Because,” she explained patiently, “he is not their god; he is _their _god_._”

He stared at her, frowning. Typically woman-like of her, making sense only to herself.

“Say that again, with more words,” he told her, and noted with relief that the tea was starting to work and he was finally beginning to think straight.

“He’s not one of the gods up there,” she pointed vaguely uphill. “He’s down here, with the regular people and the slaves.”

“Oh.”

“And besides, he’s a cat, and surely that’s not a completely bad thing, is it? Aslan is a Cat.”

“That’s a very Tipperish notion,” Alvar replied. “But I think I’m beginning to see what you mean.”

“Believe me, Alvar,” she said, suddenly growing far more sombre, “I still have a hard time accepting that there might be more than one god, and I am certainly not going to start worshipping this one all of a sudden. But being... after everything... in a world where there are centaurs and fauns and a Witch who can keep a country in winter for decades – accepting a cat who can do something like this is... not the most impossible thing to believe before breakfast, anymore. He’s not like the Witch, and he’s not like those up there, with their sacrifices and their shiny golden roof. If he helps people free of charge, count me in.”

Alvar found himself considering her in a rather different light for the first time since he had come to know her, and had to concede both that Archer and Tipper were right and there indeed was more to her than he had given her credit for, and that what she was saying did make a great deal of sense in the circumstances.

Then the last incongruous piece sank in.

“So...” he grinned at her, “Tripper? Where did _that_ come from?”

“I nearly tripped over him yesterday,” she said with a shrug, and when he started laughing, she protested: “Hey, he responded to it; that’s all that matters with a cat.”

Alvar laughed more, because it was all too true, and she mock-punched him jokingly.

“You’re supposed to be a healer, not a fighter!” he protested.

“I’m supposed to be a healer, not a merchant, and I got the marmalade anyway,” she retorted smugly.

“You did,” he admitted. “You’re in charge of marmalade-procuring from now on, forever. Let’s get out of this Aslan-forsaken city and get it to the people who want it.”

“The city is not _that_ bad at night, from a cat’s viewpoint,” Grace said. “And we cannot do that before tonight anyway, before getting the crates. Let’s go be tourists today, and _then_ let’s do that.”

Alvar found out that, despite his impatience and desire to go back home and deliver the goods, the thought of touring Tashbaan’s sights with Grace in this mood at his side was suddenly far more exciting than the thought of touring Tashbaan had ever before been.

“Let’s do that,” he agreed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's the story as written for the NFE; although there is definitely more to Grace's story, and Alvar's story, and their story together, and Tipper's story, and Archer's story, even maybe Marah's story... and hopefully, one day, I will manage to write more on at least some of that.


End file.
